Welcome to COMMUNITY, WORK AND FAMILY: CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION

1
Welcome toCOMMUNITY, WORK AND FAMILYCHANGE
AND TRANSFORMATION

• Three Day Conference
• 16,17,18 March 2005

2
Introduction

• The links between community, work and family
  have generatedwidespread interdisciplinary and
  global interest.
• They now constitute an important area of study
  in the social sciences, with major implications
  for a range of professionals and policy makers.

3

• Major conference themes will include
• Care
• The integration of paid work and personal life
• Organisational change
• Community participation
• Diversity, inclusion and marginalisation
• Professional practice, and policy
• Well-being

4
Wednesday 11.00am - Weston TheatreThe
Integration Of Paid Work And Personal Life 1

• People use active strategies, planning and
  negotiation to accommodate public and
  organisational policy, and the work-family
  interface.
• The impact of public policy for family friendly
  initiatives is mediated by organisational culture
  and practices.
• Family friendly initiatives and policies (welfare
  state and organisational) operate and must be
  understood within a general framework incl.
  notions of good parenting and child welfare.

5
Wednesday 11.00am - Room 4Diversity, Inclusion
And Marginalisation 1
Inclusion is a multi-level process - personal,
familial, structural and organizational. Presence
does not mean participation Labels are not
helpful and can further disable.
6
Wednesday 11.00am Room 4aCare 1

• Various paths - work/family/caring etc through
  life course interact and impact on peoples life
  course and possibilties - personal/work/financial.
  
• Current UK policies too simplistic to deal with
  realities of caring.
• Need for effective joined up policies
  internationally - to address the above.

7
Wednesday 11.00am Room 5The Integration Of Paid
Work And Personal Life 2

• Importance of stage at life course and specific
  family and carer needs to understand peoples
  work-life priorities.
• Low sense of entitlement from organisations in
  all working studies in this session, together
  with high level of support from supervisors and
  co-workers.
• Active and considered choices about career,
  working hours and flexibility in groups which may
  seem to not have thought much about these issues
  - strategic job choices.

8
Wednesday 11.00am Room 6Professional Practice,
and Policy 1
Experiencing much change in family structures
experiences of paid work and all in context of
much wider socio-economic and political change.
Especially in the case of one example from
Poland. This creates insecurity and perceived
risks. In response - policies more conductive to
supporting the integration of paid work, family
responsibilites and other paths of life are
crucial - but often underdeveloped ie. in the
USA. Great danger that this approach will
influence other countires. Also a need to turn to
research and practice - policy implementation and
the importance of Psychological processes in
dealing with change and uncertainty.
9
Wednesday 1330pm - Weston TheatreIsaac
PrilleltenskyChanging Change Agents?From
Amelioration to Transformation in Helping
Organizations
10
Wednesday 215pm Weston TheatreDiversity,
Inclusion And Marginalisation 2

• Space
• IdentityThese were the two key words
  participants felt connected the three
  presentations.

11
Wednesday 215pm - Room 4 The Integration Of
Paid Work And Personal Life 3

• Policy making should take into account the
  multiple identities of women and how they are
  changing the life course.
• An insecure, conflicted environment leads to an
  extra burden for working parents, but not
  necessarily lead to low reports of life
  satisfaction.
• The greater intimacy experienced in mother-child
  relations after separation are not necessarily
  viewed as positive by adult children.

12
Wednesday 215pm - Room 4aCare 2

• Families caring for children with disabilities
  may experience barriers to engagement in the
  wider community.
• There is currently a shortage of social workers
  in the UK. It is traditionally a popular
  destination for women, but as this has changed,
  numbers have dropped.
• Partnership working between health and social
  care sectors is becoming a reality in the
  independent care home sector with implications
  for a range of professionals.

13
Wednesday 215pm Room 5Community Participation
1

• Importance of social networks in
  enabling/facilitating participation.
• Participation in society in whatever ways people
  choose improves general psychological well-being.
• Sustainable transformation is what is important.
  Need policies to activate such transformation.

14
Interactive Poster Session

• The home-work interface is often researched but
  often it becomes about women and how they manage
  the interface.
• Families are not islands and work best with
  support systems It is not problem families but
  systems which are in need of change.
• Cultural assumptions around care (ie.
  breastfeeding) and work and family shape personal
  beliefs and organisational practices.

15
Wednesday 400pm Weston TheatreThe Integration
Of Paid Work And Personal Life 4

• Social policies are important but not sufficient.
• It is not enough to know whether people say they
  are satisfied. Satisfaction is constructed within
  specific national and organisational contexts.
• There is a need to understand the complex
  interplay between national policy, economic
  conditions and peoples expectations and
  experiences.

16
Wednesday 400pm Room 4Diversity, Inclusion
and Marginalisation 3

• Welfare tagging Government help is contingent on
  government definitions of what is needed.
• Empowerment is not just a word what are the
  discrepancies between organisational intentions
  and organisational policies and cultures? Why are
  there discrepancies?
• Geography and class interact in complex ways
  which underpin mothering and educational
  choices.

17
Wednesday 400pm - Room 4aCare 3

• The challenge is for practitioners and academics
  worldwide to collaborate to develop more
  culturally appropriate and individually tailored
  health and social support services.
• More cross-cultural research would help
  practioners and academics by exploring care
  giving in different contexts.
• Women should be encouraged in India to attach as
  much importance to their health needs as to mens
  health needs and to come forward with these
  needs.
• More research is needed into how children and
  adolescents can be helped to cope with such
  conflict.

18
Wednesday 400pm - Room 5Community Participation
2

• Increased globalisation and threat from savage
  corporates on community schemes.
• How do you handle diversities in town centre
  partnerships? Who do town centre partnerships
  represent?

19
Wednesday 1730pm - Weston TheatreJulia
BrannenWork-Family Issues from an
Intergenerational Perspective

• How does being a member of a particular age
  cohort affect your interest in and ideas about
  this research area?
• How does your own position in your own family
  affect your relation with your informants?

20
AFROCATS Wednesday 1830pm - Weston Lecture
Theatre
An African and Caribbean Dance Company that
highlights cultural awareness and integration in
a diverse society. A fusion of the traditional
and contemporary dance. Afrocats also provide
freelance artists to facilitate workshops in
schools, colleges and cultural events, teaching
dance, drumming and drama.
21
Thursday 900am - Weston TheatreRhona
RapoportIn Conversation

• Why is it so difficult to get over the important
  ideas in harmonising paid work with the rest of
  life?eg. getting people to think how work
  practices rather than just policies) need to
  change.
• How can we address issues about harmonising work
  and the rest of life at different points in a
  lifes course?eg. the later stages of life when
  earlier forms of work are over, but there is
  still the energy and need to do work.

22
Thursday 945 - Weston TheatreThe Integration Of
Paid Work And Personal Life 5
The extension of work/family issues as community
issues is a valuable theoretical development. It
is not just workplaces that matter but also
communities are a resource for reconciliation of
work and family life. From Finnish research When
doing paid work at home, do create boundaries
between work and family in temporal, physical and
psychological senses.
23
Thursday 945am - Room 4Community Participation
3

• Assumption that community engagement is good.
• Importance of involving young people and
  understanding why they become involved.
• Community participation is culturally nuanced
  between countries and within countries.

24
Thursday 945am - Room 4aProfessional Practice
and Policy 2

• Professional practices can be transformed with
  positive impact.
• Professional barriers make practice change
  difficult.
• Psychological training needs to be changed to
  reflect the wider socio-political change.

25
Thursday 945am Room 5The Integration Of Paid
Work And Personal Life 6
Both qualitive and quantative work-family/life
research is performed in Finland. We have
longitudinal studies and dual-career/duel-carer
studies. Flexibility and care issues are
addressed too. Workplace policies have received
more attention recently. Work-Family/life
research has increased remarkably in Finland and
is conducted from the viewpoint of several
scientific backgrounds.
26
Thursday 945am - Room 6Care 4

Carers are a shadow workforce and plug the gaps
in the formal health care system, thereby
perpetuating an effective system. As the
population ages, pain is more common amongst the
workforce and goes unacknowledged. In Norway,
neo-liberal and non-caring language is increasing
in the newspapers.
27
Thursday 1115am Weston TheatreThe Integration
Of Paid Work And Personal Life 7

• Impact of non-standard work schedules should
  involve both members of the couple
  positive/negative effects may vary.
• Cross-national work on managerial attitudes
  towards work/life practices more about
  disruptiveness theory than dependancy theory.
• Work-time flexibility in Germany varies with type
  of working time account and how the account are
  implemented and regulated.

28
Thursday 1115am Room 5The Integration Of Paid
Work And Personal Life 6

• In countries where the integration of work and
  family life is very difficult. An important
  coping strategy for couples is to limit their
  family size and have fewer children. So social
  and economic policy interests are related to
  fertility rates.
• Social, national organisational contexts effect
  individual men and womens experience of
  parenthood.
• Stated life satisfaction doesnt do justice to
  the differences in experiences and expectations.
  A supportive welfare state makes a huge
  difference to the experience of parenthood.

29
Thursday 1115am - Room 4Community Participation
4

• Action research can be used as a positive means
  to enable young people to reflect the injustice
  of exclusion and to attempt to effect change in
  their own communities.
• Is participation and community involvement about
  choice or about social control.
• Participation is a very complex concept. It is
  generally viewed aas good, but there are a lot of
  hurdles to genuine participation.

30
Thursday 1115am - Room 4aOrganisational Change 1

• Well Being is always in the process of creation
  and is dependent on the dominance of societal,
  organisational and personal agents.
• In Portugal the intensity of work prevents the
  implementation of family friendly policies in the
  private sector. Thanks to strong unions, the
  public sector has more consensus.
• New Zealand has the phenomena of over-committed
  citizens trying to hang on to their jobs. No
  consensus over who should be responsible for
  implementing work-life balance initiatives.

31
Thursday 1115am - Room 6Care 5

• A care career with young children makes sense,
  despite high turnover and poor wages, care
  workers remain committed. Social policy should be
  focused on more regulated care work.
• Women have and use wide boundaries, despite
  limited resources and under-minding state
  policing of the borders.
• Reframing the debates on care for disabled
  children into enabling care challenges
  contemporary medical approaches and frees parents
  and children from a repressive discourse.

32
Thursday 130pm Weston TheatreThe Integration
Of Paid Work And Personal Life 9

• Must be understood in relation to wider national
  socio-political and economic contexts, as well as
  local cultures, which are effected by cultural
  globalisation.
• It is important to study the work-family conflict
  from a wider perspective, as not only having
  negative consequences on the parents but also the
  children. Achieving harmonisation recreates the
  family as a unity of individuals.
• Time and special flexibility associated with
  tele-work does not automatically contribute to a
  better work-life balance. Teleworkers risk
  becoming workaholics. A smooth transition between
  work and non-work roles is possible in a
  supportive organisational, family and wider
  national context.

33
Thursday 945am - Room 4aProfessional Practice
and Policy 2
34
Thursday 130pm - Room 4aProfessional Practice
and Policy 3

• Welfare-to-work policies overlook the obstacles
  of low-income parents daily lives, thus harming
  their ability to become self-sufficient.
• Adequate account of the realities of low-income
  families would be necessary in welfare-to-work
  policies.
• Would sharing of maternity leave entitlement with
  fathers be realistic from a political point of
  view?

35
Thursday 130pm - Room 4aCommunity Participation
5

• We need systems through which learning about
  participation issues is communicated between
  projects, partners, agencies and institutions.
• How can we really reach marginalised populations
  in ways which are meaningful to them and
  recognise differences across age, gender,
  ethnicity and less obvious factors.
• Where does participatory success lie? Is it in
  our projects or on the streets? How can we
  measure success to extend beyond facts and
  figures, but takes narratives and case structures
  seriously?

36
Thursday 130pm - Room 5Well-Being 1

• Productive work cannot be separated from other
  types of work.
• The conceptualisation of Well Being is contested.
  We need to study social as well as institutional
  factors.
• Three kinds of narratives for parents of disabled
  children linear, challenging and the philosophy
  of present.

37
Thursday 130pm - Room 6Care 6

• Elder care is a hidden issue.
• The differences between being the carer of an
  elderly person and a child.
• The care work as networks of carers and not dyads
  of carers.
• Need to be able to combine paid work and care,
  not either/or.

38
Thursday 330pm Weston TheatreProfessional
Practice and Policy 4

• Communities, community workers and community
  psychologists need to collaborate to make their
  voice heard at a policy level, to ensure that
  social policies are just, practicable and
  coherent.
• Communities and universities can and should work
  successfully together to bring about changes that
  improve conditions for deprived and marginalised
  groups in society.

39
Thursday 330pm - Room 4Community Participation
6
40
Thursday 130pm - Room 4aOrganisational Change 2
41
Thursday 330pm Room 6The Integration Of Paid
Work And Personal Life 10

• Couples who want to move away from the male
  breadwinner model do not have any institutional
  support.
• It is important to focus on couples preferences
  and the arrangements they are forced into due
  to institutional lags.
• The concept of the provider and the
  conceptualisation of the work-family are western
  constraints. For Nigerians, being a good
  provider involves more than money. For fathers,
  it also includes providing stability and
  protection.

42
Thursday 430pm - Weston TheatreIvan lewis
MPGovernment Policy/Thinking on Work-Life
Balance, Social Inclusion and Communication
Issues
43
Thursday 615pm Manchester Town HallCivic
ReceptionHosted by the Deputy Lord MayorGuest
Speaker Dame Sandra BurslemVice Chancellor MMU
44
Thursday 945am - Room 4aProfessional Practice
and Policy 2
45
Friday 900am - Weston TheatreMaritza
MonteroCommunity Politics of Liberation

• How can we recognise when and why to pose a
  problematic question?
• How can naturalised ideas or behaviour be
  distinguished from cultural patterns of behaviour
  or thinking?
• Is there a difference between them?

46
Friday 945am Weston TheatreProfessional
Practice and Policy 5
It is suggested that the international focus of
control may be a determining factor in the higher
levels of quality of life and job satisfaction in
female representatives of freelance jobs in
Poland and France. Preliminary work exploring the
personal life of women journalists in Spain
indicate that the nature of professional work
places limitations on life choices. A mixed
picture is emerging regarding the successful
development of the Connexions initiative in youth
work. There is a need to pay more attention to
the relational identity of professionals in
this work context.
47
Friday 945am Room 4Diversity, Inclusion and
Marginalisation 4
Respect and relationships are needed in schools
to enable participation and learning. Where this
is lacking, participation reamins
peripheral. Children who are performing adult
roles such as translating and caring, raises
issues such as negotiating family and social
commitments and having a normal
childhood. Youth support services for the young
gay, lesbian and bisexual community can be
positive in terms of reducing feelings of
isolation, lack of support and a need for more
information.
48
Friday 945am - Room 4aOrganisational Change 3
49
Friday 945am - Room 5Well-Being 2
Social change and social policies drive each
other. Support is necessary as a facilitator of
well-being. Sustainable organisational change in
pursuit of well-being via increasing resources,
involving unions, facilitating others, peer
support and positive relationships.
50
Friday 945am - Room 6Professional Practice and
Policy 4
51
Friday 1100am Weston TheatreOrganisational
Change 5

• Importance of measuring and considering the
  interrelation between subjective and objective
  approaches to job insecurity.
• Collaborative Interactive Action Research as a
  method to be used in the promotion of
  organisational effectiveness.The need to take
  into account each level, each situation, and also
  each countrys cultural peculiarities.
• Ways in which disability is not included in
  services and facilities in higher education
  institutions should be brought into the
  light.Educating the disabled to exert their
  rights and bring transformation to such a
  situation is a way to overcome it.

52
Friday 1100am Room 4Care 7

• An innovative SureStart programme in the north of
  England is enabling families to produce their own
  support plans.
• Accompanying another to reduce loneliness is an
  important aspect of friendship with urban
  Peruvians.
• A survey of long-term care facilities in Ontario
  indicated lack of time for workers to complete
  care tasks, and that the physical environment in
  long-term care homes can be inadequate.

53
Thursday 945am - Room 4Community Participation
3
54
Friday 1100am - Room 4aCommunity Participation
7
55
Friday 1100am Room 5The Integration Of Paid
Work And Personal Life 11

• Gender operates on many levels.
• Inequality and marginalisation are limited to the
  gendered division of labour in relation to work
  and family.
• Organisational social change (shifts in attitudes
  and family structure) are creating challenges for
  men and women in relation to work and family